


last words of a shooting star

by noturno



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bounty Hunters, Flirting, M/M, Read Author's Notes, Rivals to Lovers, Sexual Humor, Space Pirates, Undisclosed relationships - Freeform, certainly not me, pre-poly perhaps? who knows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28908774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noturno/pseuds/noturno
Summary: Mark is laughing as he rubs at his throat — it’s just a tiny cut, will heal in no time —, and he turns around to face him with a dashing smile, tucking his hands inside the pockets of Dejun’s jacket that he stole. “What’s it gonna be, handsome?” he asks. “Are we dueling to death for that ship of yours, or could I perhaps call us…” he extends a hand. “Partners?”(In a galaxy far, far away, Dejun has grown too used to fleeting things to be surprised when Mark leaves.)
Relationships: Mark Lee/Xiao De Jun | Xiao Jun
Comments: 12
Kudos: 63
Collections: Challenge #4 — Awaken The World





	last words of a shooting star

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to the a little wonder mods for putting this fest together once again! i had lots of fun writing this, and hope you'll have just as much reading this silly thing :p
> 
> quick notice: there's a brief mention of blood/injury in this fic! it happens around the second time they meet, and it's super quick and light though, but thought i'd let you know.

_And you'd say you love me and look in my eyes_

_But I know through mine, you were_

_Looking in yours._

— MITSKI

Back to the very beginning, when Xiao Dejun sees Mark Lee leaving for the first time, he is a sun-kissed, trouble-shaped dream that presses a blaster — _Dejun’s_ own blaster — to his forehead and says, casually as if he’s talking about the music inside the club: “Thanks for the ship, handsome. It’s truly a pity that you have to die.”

“Do I really?” Dejun asks, truthfully, trying to buy himself some time. Something about this tastes funny on his tongue — his mother once told him that he’d end up exactly like this, if he continued to underestimate everyone else. His reflection on the side of the ship tells him: _you should’ve listened to your mother, you should’ve never let a boy this pretty get this close._ “Are you really going to kill me after all the fun we had?”

Mark clicks his tongue. Dejun wonders if that’s really his name; he looks like a Mark, in his opinion. A name sharp on his tongue, short and quick like the way he had swept Dejun off his feet. “You talk too much for someone who’s got a gun to your head, but...” he lowers the blaster, tapping under Dejun’s chin with it before stepping aside, though still pointing it to him. “I’m a sucker for pretty faces, and it’d be a pity to waste yours. I better get going before the storm gets here, though.”

The sandstorm, it’s been picking up on this side of the planet, makes Dejun dread having his legs and hands tied in the back of a club where no one can see him.

“So soon?” he asks, ironic.

He watches as Mark gives him a sweet, sweet smile before pressing the tip of his boot to Dejun’s chest, tipping him backwards until he falls to the ground with a thud.

Oh, he was so sweet when he wasn’t stealing Dejun’s ship and leaving him to die in some galaxy far from home. So, so sweet during the couple of hours they spent dancing and chatting, whispering sweet nothings in Dejun’s ear and asking him if they could take this somewhere a little more private. Honestly, so damn sweet Dejun can still taste him on his tongue, really.

“If you do survive, though,” Mark says at last, smirking from where he’s leaning against the door. “You can take me dancing again some day.”

Dejun’s wrists are starting to hurt from straining against the zip tie — such an old trick, honestly, he should have seen it coming. “You bet I’ll gladly do so,” he responds. The music plays so loudly inside the club that the ground under him shakes slightly, his own personal earthquake, and he has to close his eyes in order not to be blinded by the sand picking up when Mark’s ship starts taking off.

When Dejun sees Mark Lee leaving for the first time, he’s a glowing spot in the red sky, getting smaller and smaller until he vanishes completely, as if he wasn’t even there in the first place, the memory of him starting to fade from Dejun’s mouth.

The thing about the ship is that it once belonged to Dejun’s mother.

He’s not attached to it. He’s good at letting things go, has grown used to not being attached to anything, from the places he moves to, to the people he meets, to the clothes on his body, to the weapons he carries, to the mouths he kisses — all this is passing, all this shouldn’t hold him back. But the ship? The ship belonged to his mother. She had bought a decadent, discontinued model and revamped it herself. He had helped, of course, but he was so little, she did most of the job. And she did it so well that he hardly ever had to repair it in the years to come, far from her and far from home.

So, naturally, he’d recognize it anywhere.

“I must say, this turning of events was unexpected,” Mark tells him. He’s different from the last time Dejun saw him, auburn hair now a silky black, and he’s wearing Dejun’s leather jacket that he had left on the ship. Hell, he smells like him even. Dejun had found him in a dirty pub trying to pickpocket someone, and by the looks of it, he’s pretty good at that — Dejun found too much gold on his pocket for it to be beginner’s luck. “Hey, there, has anyone ever told you that you have beautiful eyes?”

Mark drops his head to his shoulder when Dejun presses the blade against his throat hard enough to draw a drop of blood. “I can see you’re trying to intimidate me,” Mark continues. “But this is actually turning me o—”

“I should kill you for this,” Dejun says. “I should leave you on a stranded planet to fend for yourself, to either get eaten by something or to _starve_. Do you know how long it took me to get enough money to leave that planet?”

“I’ll bet on a couple of hours,” Mark taunts. He cocks his head to the side, his nose right under Dejun’s jaw. He’s not even trying to set his wrists free, where they’re pressed onto his back. “I know you. I see you when I look in the mirror. Would you rather have me as your enemy, or would you rather have me on your side?” he tilts his chin up, lips brushing Dejun’s ear as he whispers: “I quite like it from behind, though. I’m not picky when it comes to positions.”

Sighing, Dejun pushes him off. Mark is laughing as he rubs at his throat — it’s just a tiny cut, will heal in no time —, and he turns around to face him with a dashing smile, tucking his hands inside the pockets of Dejun’s jacket that he stole. “What’s it gonna be, handsome?” he asks. “Are we dueling to death for that ship of yours, or could I perhaps call us…” he extends a hand. “Partners?”

 _You should have listened to your mother,_ Dejun reminds himself, _you should’ve never let a boy this pretty get this close._ He takes Mark’s hand, giving it a firm shake.

“Thirty minutes,” he says.

Mark raises his eyebrows. “Pardon me?”

“It took me thirty minutes to grab the money and go,” Dejun responds. “After you left me stranding. Twenty if you don’t count the time I spent setting me free from your ties.”

Mark nods. “Not bad, not bad,” he comments. His hand is warm and rough under Dejun’s touch, like he remembers, and when he pulls Dejun forward, the blade is yet again pressed to his throat. Despite it, he leans in to whisper: “I’ll teach you how to do that in five if you promise you won’t point this knife at me again. Blades made me queasy.”

“Do they really?” Dejun hums. He pockets the blade in one swift motion, and Mark cups his face with both hands, kissing him before he knows it.

It feels quite reckless, honestly a little dumb, to let himself be pressed to a wall by Mark again, but Dejun keeps a hand on the blade at all times, the other around Mark’s throat as a warning. The latter smiles against his mouth, his fingers digging to Dejun’s hair and his lips soft, velvety and familiar, and the sounds he makes tell him he’s not bullshitting this time.

Still, later on, Dejun watches him with attention as Mark sits on his unmade bed, fiddling with a communicator that Dejun had taken apart a fortnight before Mark stole his ship, trying to figure out how to make it work again. He seems to enjoy broken things, too engrossed in his task to notice him. His fingers work fast and diligently — they’re rough and boyish and know how to do damage, but are gentle over Dejun’s skin.

He’s also got strong arms, tanned in a way that says he was born somewhere warmer than where Dejun grew up in, and his back is covered in scars that go all the way lower, hidden by the blanket pooling around his hips. Dejun has similar ones. The life they share. They’re the ones who do other people’s dirty work, anyway.

“It’s rude to stare,” he says after a while. The communicator is halfway done — it’s useless, being just one, but maybe Dejun can find another, in the nearest planet. They’re going to need it, if Mark doesn’t choose to betray him when he falls asleep. He said he won’t, but you never know. Dejun knows him. He sees him when he looks in the mirror.

Snorting, Dejun eats the last of his meal — something good and nutritious he found in the cabinet that Mark had thankfully stocked. It seems that while he picks pockets, he’d rather spend money on the vendors in the street who take no part in this life of them. Dejun hadn’t eaten anything substantial in weeks, unable to find a job without his ship. He puts the bowl down. “I won’t look at you anymore, then,” he says.

“No,” Mark sets the communicator on the shelf beside the bed. He lies back down again, curling an arm behind his head and drumming fingers on his stomach, a tune that Dejun doesn’t know. “You can look. Closer if you’d like, even. I wouldn’t mind.”

Dejun wants to ask him: _are you that lonely? Are you that desperate?_ But he’s stood in Mark’s shoes for way too long — probably will do so for the rest of his life. He gets up from his seat on the makeshift kitchen and crosses the room in four steps; by the second, Mark has already made space for him in the tiny bed, and he’s already tilting his chin up when Dejun presses a knee to the mattress.

“I have a job,” Mark tells him. “A couple parsecs from here.”

Dejun nods. He continues: “It’s a big shot. Perhaps the greatest so far — I go in, I do the job, I walk out, I won’t have to worry about money for a long time.” Mark pauses. “ _We_ won’t have to worry about money for a long time.”

“I don’t know where I’m going to be when you come back,” Dejun replies. It’s the obvious. Mark knows it, from the way he nods, wrapping his hand in a bandage — they had it bad with some thugs a couple days before. They have to leave this planet soon, before anything else happens. “What do you suggest, then?”

“We meet up somewhere,” Mark responds, simply. “Let’s say, in a fortnight. I shouldn’t take long. I’m very good at what I do.”

That, Dejun is well aware of. Mark has told him countless stories already — places he’s been, people he’s met, lovers he’s had, ships he’s stolen ( _“I’m sorry,” he had said. “But I can fly anything, handsome. Why not make use of it?”_ ). And even if he hadn’t, Dejun would’ve heard it somewhere else. He’s seen the posters on the walls everywhere. The people that don’t want Mark’s head on a stick, they want him to work for them. Dejun doesn’t know if he’s the smartest man he’s ever met or the stupidest — making a name for yourself, it’s a double edged blade.

“But if I don’t show up,” Mark continues. He ties the bandage with his teeth, even though Dejun could have done it for him. “Then you let me go. You’re good at that, aren’t you?”

The night before Mark leaves, they dance.

It's silly, as there is no music, but Dejun hums one under his breath, his fingers drumming a beat against Mark's waist. It's a tight fit in the ship, not much space to roam around — too many stolen cargo, weapons thrown around, tools that Mark had left out of the box, clothes and all —, but they make it work. Mark's arms around his neck, his fingers toying with the hairs on the back of his head. Dejun presses kisses to his cheek, his jaw, and he tastes like he always did.

“Minhyung,” he whispers. He knew Mark wasn’t his name — more like a brand. Something he made up for himself. This, though, only Dejun gets to call him. He doesn’t even have anything to say, it just feels good to have the name roll off his tongue.

He’s holding onto him too tightly. It should never be like this. But Mark shudders in his hold, his breath mingling with Dejun’s. “Don’t worry about me,” he replies. “I’m good at finding my way.”

A fortnight passes, and then another, and then another. Dejun knows it’s stupid and reckless and, honestly, a bit ridiculous for him to keep waiting at their designated spot for so long. He knows the coordinates are right, he’s checked them with Mark a thousand times, but still, a hopeless part of him keeps waiting for that communicator to light up, for Mark’s voice to echo: _where are you, silly thing? I’ve been waiting for you. Don’t tell me you got the wrong place, Xiao Dejun. Haven’t you learned anything from me?_

But it never does. Dejun is used to radio silence — he’s lived like this for years. When he saw Mark Lee leaving for the last time, he had been humming along to a song that Dejun taught him, something from his birthplace, and he was a sun-kissed, trouble-shaped dream that kissed him senseless against the door to his ship. Sometimes, Dejun swears his lips are still swollen from it, but perhaps it’s just the way he keeps bringing his fingers to his mouth, in hopes that he’s going to bump into Mark on their rendezvous point and relive it a thousand times more.

It doesn’t hurt. It shouldn’t, anyway. He leaves, then. He leaves for good. Dejun believes he’s good at letting go — he has to be. The next planet he finds is sunny and unfamiliar, and he spends a couple of weeks just acquaiting himself with the local paymasters. He’s got bunch of jobs secured for a long time.

Then— then someone approaches him. Dejun has been well aware of the stranger for a couple of days already, to the point he’s not sure whether he should call him a stranger anymore. The other paymasters have warned him about this gentleman. When he sits beside Dejun on the bar, he makes sure not to stare too much.

People have warned him of this kind. Dashing beauty, wealth, honor, and longevity above all. All things that a renegade like Dejun doesn’t know. If he lives past twenty five, it’ll be a miracle, and judging by the coat that the other man is wearing, he’s certainly not someone to be messed with. Dejun’s coworkers would have his head for less than half of what he must carry on his pockets.

The stranger sizes him up — he’s mildly offended. He doesn’t come from a race of warriors, but he can fend for himself. And it’s not like the other seems fit for a fight either, not with that pair of expensive glasses perched up on his strong nose. “I’ve been searching for you, Xiao Dejun, but you’re quite hard to track down, did you know that?”

“I have my reasons to be,” Dejun replies nonchalantly. “May I help you, ...?”

“I’m Jeno,” he extends a hand. “If you’re good at finding people the way you’re good running from them, I might have a job for you.”

He puts his drink down, taking it. These aren’t the hands of a fighter, for sure — soft and gentle. These are the hands of someone who has people doing the dirty job for them. People like Dejun.

“And what would that job be?” he asks.

“I’m searching for someone.”

“Dead or alive?”

“Hopefully, very much alive,” Jeno laughs. His eyes curl up in half-moons, and he tosses a leather bag on the countertop, with no reservations.

Dejun reaches out for it immediately, eyeing the content, and tries not to gasp. “This must be someone important,” he comments. “How can I be sure that I’m not walking into a death sentence here?”

“Important, yes, you can say that,” Jeno tilts his head to the side, fingers drumming on the counter familiarly. “I believe he’ll give you more trouble himself than others will, though. My boyfriend, he’s good at finding his way, just not to where you expect him. So…” he raises his eyebrows. “Do we have a deal?”

Something feels very, very funny at the pit of Dejun’s stomach, and it takes too long for him to realize what it is — Jeno has already set another bag on the countertop, and Dejun has to either take it or leave before the other bounty hunters at the bar take knowledge of them. He closes his fist around the bag and tucks it on the inside pocket of his jacket, a new one he had to buy. The former has been taken for good, probably never to be returned.

If only—

“Yes,” he replies, at last. “We have a deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> forgive me for my jeno crimes and see you in the next round (hopefully)


End file.
